Synchronous execution is non-negotiable for game logic. The EVM's asynchronous, transaction-based model introduces unpredictable latency and state conflicts, making real-time interactions impossible. This is why games like Dark Forest rely on off-chain 'planets'.
gaming-and-metaverse-the-next-billion-users
Blog
Why Gaming-Specific VMs Are the Next Frontier
The EVM's sequential execution and gas model are fundamentally incompatible with high-frequency game state. This analysis argues that custom VMs, optimized for parallel processing and native digital assets, are a non-negotiable prerequisite for scaling to a billion users.
introduction
THE ARCHITECTURAL MISMATCH
The EVM is a Terrible Game Engine
The Ethereum Virtual Machine's design is fundamentally misaligned with the deterministic, high-frequency execution requirements of on-chain gaming.
State bloat cripples performance. Every game action, from moving a character to firing a weapon, writes to global state. This creates unsustainable gas costs and bottlenecks, a problem Redstone and Lattice's MUD framework explicitly solve with an ECS architecture.
The fee market is adversarial to players. Gas auctions turn gameplay into a pay-to-win mechanic where the highest bidder's transaction processes first. Gaming-specific VMs like Argus Labs' Elixir implement deterministic, tick-based execution to eliminate this.
Evidence: EVM games on Arbitrum and Polygon average 5-10 transactions per user session. Competitors like Immutable zkEVM and Ronin achieve 50+ by optimizing for batched state updates and custom opcodes.
key-trends
THE GAMING BOTTLENECK
The Three Fracture Points: Where the EVM Breaks
The EVM's one-size-fits-all architecture fails under the unique demands of high-frequency, state-rich gaming applications.
01
The State Bloat Problem
EVM's global state model forces every node to store every game asset, creating unsustainable overhead for persistent worlds.
- Gas costs for state updates scale with the entire network, not the game.
- Node sync times balloon, threatening decentralization.
- Storage rent models (e.g., Solana's state compression) are a band-aid, not a fix.
~10 TB
State Size
>1M TPS
Required Throughput
02
The Deterministic Latency Ceiling
EVM block times (~2-12s) and finality (~15s+) are orders of magnitude too slow for real-time gameplay.
- Sub-second finality is non-negotiable for fair, synchronous mechanics.
- Parallel execution (like Solana, Sui, Aptos) is required but insufficient without a tailored instruction set.
- Rollups inherit L1 latency, making them a poor fit for real-time logic.
<200ms
Target Finality
~2s
EVM Floor
03
The Opcode Mismatch
EVM's financial-grade opcodes lack primitives for game mechanics, forcing expensive workarounds.
- No native randomness (VRF is a costly external call).
- Inefficient physics/coordinate math burns gas on basic operations.
- **Projects like Argus Labs and Lattice's MUD are building custom VMs (World Engine, MUD2) to embed game logic at the chain level.
100x
Gas Inefficiency
Native VRF
Missing Primitive
WHY GENERAL-PURPOSE CHAINS LOSE
VM Architecture Showdown: EVM vs. Gaming-First VMs
A feature and performance matrix comparing the dominant smart contract platform against specialized virtual machines built for high-frequency on-chain gaming.
| Architectural Feature / Metric | Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) | Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) | MOVE-based VMs (Aptos/Sui) |
|---|---|---|---|
Execution Model | Single-threaded, sequential | Parallel optimistic execution | Parallel execution with object-centric state |
State Access Pattern | Global shared state (Merkle Patricia Trie) | Concurrent state via SeaLevel runtime | Independent objects, no global contention |
Transaction Finality (P50) | ~12 seconds (L1) | < 1 second | < 1 second |
Max Theoretical TPS (Sustained) | ~30 (L1), ~5k (L2 Rollup) | 5,000 - 65,000+ | 100,000+ (claimed) |
Gas Model for Games | Per-opcode, unpredictable cost | Prioritization fees, predictable units | Object-centric, no gas for reads |
Native Asset Standard | ERC-20 / ERC-721 | SPL Token | Custom Coin & Object standards |
Atomic Composability | Within a single block | Cross-program calls within tx | Transaction-level dependencies |
Dominant Gaming SDKs | Unity/Unreal via third-party bridges | Native Unity SDK (Solana GameShift) | Native Unity/Unreal SDKs |
deep-dive
THE VERTICAL INTEGRATION
Beyond Parallelism: The Native Asset Revolution
Gaming-specific virtual machines are winning by optimizing for native digital assets, not just raw transaction throughput.
Asset-Centric Architecture is the edge. General-purpose EVM chains treat in-game items as ERC-20/721 tokens, forcing every action through a global state machine. Gaming VMs like MUD and Dojo model the entire game state as a single, queryable database, making atomic interactions with thousands of assets a single state transition.
Parallelism solves the wrong problem. Solana and Sui advertise high TPS, but their generalized state models create contention for popular in-game assets, causing latency spikes. A purpose-built VM pre-defines all state access patterns, enabling deterministic, contention-free execution that feels instant to players.
The proof is in the player count. Fully on-chain games using MUD, like Primodium and Sky Strife, sustain hundreds of concurrent players performing complex, atomic actions. This demonstrates that vertical integration of logic and state outperforms layering games on a generic L2 like Arbitrum or Optimism.
risk-analysis
WHY GAMING-SPECIFIC VMS ARE THE NEXT FRONTIER
The Bear Case: Fragmentation and Tooling Debt
General-purpose L1s and L2s are failing game developers, creating a tooling debt that stifles innovation and user experience.
01
The EVM Bottleneck: A Square Peg for a Round Hole
The EVM's synchronous, single-threaded execution is fundamentally mismatched for gaming's real-time, high-throughput demands. This forces developers into complex, expensive workarounds.
- Latency Kills UX: Finality times of ~12 seconds on Ethereum or even ~2 seconds on fast L2s are unacceptable for real-time interactions.
- State Bloat Tax: Storing complex game state on-chain is prohibitively expensive, pushing logic off-chain and reintroducing trust assumptions.
- Tooling Mismatch: Existing DeFi-centric tooling (MetaMask, Ethers.js) lacks native support for game-specific primitives like session keys or inventory systems.
~12s
EVM Finality
$1M+
State Cost/Game
02
Fragmentation Hell: The Multi-Chain Player Experience
Players are forced to become amateur financiers, managing assets and gas across incompatible ecosystems, which destroys immersion and onboarding.
- Asset Silos: An NFT earned on Arbitrum is useless in a game on Polygon without slow, expensive bridging via LayerZero or Across.
- Gas Juggling: Players must hold a portfolio of native tokens (ETH, MATIC, AVAX) just to play, a non-starter for mainstream adoption.
- Unified Identity Failure: No portable social graph or reputation system exists across gaming chains, resetting player progress per ecosystem.
5+
Wallets Needed
-90%
Retention
03
The Solution: Purpose-Built VMs (Move, Fuel, SVM)
Gaming-specific virtual machines like Aptos' Move, Fuel, and Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) offer architectural primitives that eliminate tooling debt at the base layer.
- Parallel Execution: Architectures like SVM's Sealevel enable simultaneous transaction processing, unlocking >50k TPS for in-game actions.
- Native Asset Safety: Move's resource-oriented programming prevents asset duplication and loss, a critical feature for digital economies.
- Modular Design: Fuel's UTXO-based model and Celestia-inspired data availability allow custom fee markets and minimal state overhead for games.
>50k
Potential TPS
~100ms
Target Latency
04
The Emerging Stack: Paima, Argus, Loot Chain
A new generation of application-specific chains and rollups is proving the thesis, abstracting blockchain complexity entirely from players.
- Sovereign Rollups: Projects like Paima Engine and Argus use underlying L1s (e.g., EigenLayer, Celestia) for security while providing a fully customized gaming environment.
- Intent-Centric Design: Future systems will leverage intent-based architectures (like UniswapX) for gas abstraction, letting players sign high-level actions, not transactions.
- Vertical Integration: Dedicated chains like Loot Chain optimize every component—from consensus to data availability—for a single game universe's needs.
0
Gas for Players
1-Click
Onboarding
future-outlook
THE GAMING FRONTIER
The Multi-VM Future: Specialization Wins
General-purpose VMs like the EVM are a bottleneck for gaming; specialized execution environments are the only viable path forward.
General-purpose VMs are inefficient. The EVM's single-threaded execution and expensive storage model create prohibitive costs for high-frequency, state-intensive operations like in-game actions. This forces a trade-off between decentralization and performance that kills user experience.
Gaming requires deterministic performance. A specialized gaming VM like Paima Engine or Argus abstracts the underlying chain, enabling sub-second finality and predictable gas costs. This is a fundamental architectural shift from on-chain logic to off-chain state computation with on-chain settlement.
The model is app-specific rollups. Projects like Loot Chain (using Caldera) and Mirage (on Arbitrum Orbit) are not deploying smart contracts. They are launching their own sovereign execution layers with custom fee tokens and governance, optimized exclusively for their game's logic.
Evidence: The EVM's 30M gas block limit caps state updates at ~150 per second. A single complex game transaction can consume this entire block, making shared block space economically unviable. Specialized VMs bypass this by designing the chain for the game, not adapting the game to the chain.
takeaways
GAMING VMS
TL;DR for CTOs and Architects
General-purpose blockchains are failing game developers. Gaming-specific VMs are emerging as the only viable path to scale.
01
The Problem: EVM's State Bloat
The Ethereum Virtual Machine's global state model is a performance killer for games. Every player action competes for the same execution lane, causing unpredictable latency and gas spikes.
- Unacceptable Latency: ~15s block times are non-starters for real-time games.
- State Contention: High-throughput games like Parallel or Illuvium would cripple an L1.
- Cost Proliferation: Micro-transactions become economically impossible.
~15s
Block Time
$10+
Avg. TX Cost
02
The Solution: Parallelized, App-Specific Execution
Gaming VMs like Paima Engine (on Cardano) or Lattice's MUD framework enable isolated, high-frequency state transitions. They treat game logic as a sovereign state machine.
- Deterministic Performance: Sub-second finality for in-game actions.
- Horizontal Scaling: Each game or shard runs its own execution environment, avoiding the Solana-style mempool congestion problem.
- Custom Opcodes: Native support for game primitives (randomness, tick systems) that EVM must emulate inefficiently.
<1s
Finality
<$0.01
TX Cost
03
The Architectural Shift: Sovereign Economics
A gaming VM decouples a game's economic layer from its consensus layer. This allows for fee markets and tokenomics tailored to player behavior, not DeFi whales.
- Predictable Fees: Gas fees can be subsidized or paid in game tokens, as seen with Immutable zkEVM.
- Localized Congestion: A popular game's traffic doesn't impact other dApps on the chain.
- Developer Sovereignty: Teams control upgrade paths and fee structures without Layer 1 governance, a model pioneered by dYdX on Cosmos.
100%
Fee Control
0
External Spillover
04
The Competitor: Monolithic L1s Aren't Enough
Chains like Solana and Sui boast high TPS but still force games into a one-size-fits-all VM. This creates inherent contention and limits design.
- Resource Competition: An NFT mint can still delay your game's transaction.
- Lack of Specialization: The VM isn't optimized for game state transitions or tick-based logic.
- Proven Need: The migration of major games from Polygon to dedicated chains/rollups demonstrates market demand.
Shared
Execution Lane
Generic
VM Ops
05
The Blueprint: L2s & AppChains as Vessels
The winning stack uses a modular settlement layer (Ethereum, Celestia) for security, with a gaming-optimized VM as the execution layer. Arbitrum Orbit, OP Stack, and Polygon CDK are the enabling infra.
- Security Inheritance: Leverages Ethereum's validator set for finality.
- VM Flexibility: Teams can fork Movement Labs' Move VM or build a custom WASM runtime.
- Interop via Bridges: Assets move via secure bridges like Hyperlane or LayerZero, not the VM itself.
Ethereum
Security
Custom
Execution
06
The Bottom Line: Build or Be Boxed In
For a CTO, the choice is binary: accept the constraints of a general-purpose chain or own your performance destiny. The infra is now commodity.
- Time-to-Market: Frameworks like Argus Labs' World Engine or Curio's stack reduce dev time from years to months.
- Competitive MoAT: Games with superior UX from a dedicated VM will capture players.
- Future-Proofing: Enables on-chain physics and AI agents, the next frontier after simple asset ownership.
10x
Dev Speed
MoAT
Competitive Edge
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